Category: Love Story

I am often intrigued (I’m not sure if this is the best word to describe it) by all these that are happening between us. The start, it was something I did not think would lead to anything deep and beautiful, but to something deep and beautiful it led to.

This morning, while walking toward you, you smoking what remained of that cigarette stick always stuck in between your index and middle fingers, I barely held myself from smiling. I felt I was again a teenage boy mesmerised by the sight of a teacher he admires a lot, whose attention he wants to catch, whose affirmation of his good works he always seeks.

The noonday sun as it shone on your face almost blinded me. I tried to ask you a mundane question because if I said anything other than ‘how are you’ I’d betray the upwelling of excitement I had inside me. And it has long ceased to be appropriate for a man my age.

I have told you that my circumstance keeps me from being with you, and you told me that my choice of the word ‘circumstance’ is something that you don’t like. You’re right. It’s a word used by a coward, someone not brave enough to understand our agency as humans who are always given that choice to redirect our journey to wherever our hearts lead us.

Forgive the cliche. I have not written here for a long time, and I have become quite rusty. This is my way of documenting this very important decision I’m making as an adult.

Yesterday was a good day. We walked under the trees, we lay on the grass, you lay your head on my chest, you read me a poem, we kissed; it was so good I didn’t want for the day to end. I wanted it to go on forever. But my circumstance keeps on pushing itself on me.

But this shall soon change because you’ve given me enough reasons to.

As for irony, I shall write about it soon.

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On this same day, 25 months, or 100 weeks, or 766 days ago, or 18624 hours, or 1117440 minutes, or 67046400 or so seconds ago, we both decided to fall. I’d gladly fall again in the next life or in another universe for and with you. I love you, babe.

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My professor extended her lecture until it felt to me staying in that room was beyond my ability to endure. She stretched her talk for 7 minutes. It was 8:07 in the evening. Every extra minute was an affront to decency. At that point, I wanted nothing but to go home, eat dinner, and sleep.

I’m a rather resilient man. I pursue nearly endlessly what I desire and what I believe I deserve. Only when I feel that I have exhausted possible means do I stop and go back to my room and relish silence. I sulk less now. Pouting has gone too unbecoming to somebody my age. The fact that I am using this blog to broadcast what I feel at the moment is cringe-inducing. Finding solace in the most-often anonymous interactions here is very juvenile. But the height of my asininity is this thinking that this muddied language is an expression. I have not communicated anything, except maybe that my thoughts are in a dirty puddle now.

I rushed from Ateneo to Makati, thirsty, hungry, and physically and emotionally exhausted after a long day of seemingly endless readings and talking. I waited outside your building drenched in perspiration after brisk walking from the MRT station in Ayala to Paseo de Roxas and running from there to the front of your building. I waited more. Not wanting to sound very excited, I waited some more because you were already maybe “in a hurry”, I told myself. But I made the mistake of succumbing to my thirst. I left to buy Gatorade at a 7eleven in the nearby block only to receive that text saying my making you wait was “not funny”.

I was flabbergasted.

I saw nothing wrong in letting you know I was.

Tonight, I am sleeping alone (because you wanted to spend the night by yourself). And because I badly need rest, a quiet time to read that book I was meaning to read but never found the time and space, a moment to check a handful of my students’ papers, and to watch Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservation or a History Channel documentary. And to also have my share of this solitude.

And you also need this as much as I do.

We often ignore the value of distance (or space) and its benefits to any type of relationships. In fact, it is necessary as it gives both parties a breather; it allows them to stretch here and there, and, maybe, give them chances to long for each other, something they forget as essential to a well-functioning union.

And so tonight, when I’m done pumping iron at the gym, when dinner is over, when I am about to sleep, I’ll relish the moments but will look forward to seeing each other again. Tomorrow, hopefully.

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